Keep it simple when in France

My role in the family is to take well-conceived vacation plans and complicate them. Someone in every family has to be the acknowledged enforcer of the laws of entropy. Over the years, I have had a gift for turning even the most sublime vacation into an ordeal. Thus almost from the moment we arrived at de Gaulle for a vacation in Paris, I began dreaming of leaving Paris behind and going on a road trip.

I wanted to see castles and vineyards and tiny French villages with cobbled streets barely wide enough for a tank. But I didn't know if a road trip would be plausible in France — a real road trip, the kind that's impulsive, unplanned and potentially calamitous.

Infrastructure

The US has the infrastructure to support such spontaneity. You can pull off the highway, grab chow, spend the night, hit the road again. These freeway-exit retail villages have no character, of course, and at 3 in the morning it is impossible to recall if you're in a Comfort Inn or a Motel 6. The great virtue of these places is the ease, with which they can be departed.

Obviously a person can, with some forethought, drive just about anywhere in France or elsewhere in Europe, because there are cars, there are highways, there are gas stations, etc. This is not like parachuting into Siberia and trying to use a hand axe to build a raft to float down the Lena.

Problematic

My colleagues and friends warned me that renting a car and driving in France would be problematic, and the travel guides frown at the idea. They pointed out that the cars can be expensive and tiny, and that gas is so precious it is sold by the litre. Lodging could be iffy since, at the end of July and early August, everyone in Europe goes on holiday.

After three days of hitting the road, getting lost, seeing lots of castles and taking in local fare, I reluctantly concede, that there are virtues to planning. There comes a moment when you realise that improvisational motoring is really not so different from being lost. Freedom's just another word for not knowing which way to go. Next time, I might even take the ultimate precaution and, prior to hitting the road, buy a guidebook to France.